Cake is known for a long time and is prepared in numerous varieties. Most cakes are made with wheat flour and therefore have some amount of gluten, which means special care needs to be taken to ensure cakes don't have a chewy texture. The cake ingredients are mixed as short as possible once the flour has been added in order to avoid gluten development. This differs markedly from sturdy food items made with flour such as bread, where the goal is to agitate the gluten as much as possible. The wheat flour selected to be used for cakes is often one naturally lower in gluten or with gluten that does not develop elasticity.
Typical cake ingredients are wheat flour, eggs and sugar. Optionally, chemical leavening agents, milk components, emulsifiers, salts, stabilizers, water, and/or fat—such as for example butter, margarine and or oil are added.
The fat is added to entrap air during mixing, for lubrication to improve the overall eating quality in terms of moistness and tenderness, to improve the structure of the finished product, and/or to extend shelf life. Next to the beneficial effects of fat in cake, there are some disadvantages related to the use of these ingredients.
The fat content in some types of cake can be very high, such as for example the butter/margarine present in pound cake. This type of cake is a calorie booster, which can cause obesity.
Today's consumers in modern societies are confronted with an imbalance between calorie-intake and physical exercise. Therefore a growing percentage of the population is overweight and more and more people become obese. According to WHO figures (2003) 1 billion adults are overweight and 300 million are clinically obese. Obesity is connected to a broad spectrum of diseases such as cardio-vascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, etc. Therefore a growing need is obvious to reduce the intake of calories by replacing fat, sugar and other high calorie components of food products, such as for example cakes.
Moreover, in a number of cake recipes fats with a relatively high amount of saturated fatty acids are used, which contribute to the melting characteristics of the product. However, the intake of such saturated fatty acids is also directly correlated with the occurrence of cardiovascular health diseases. For example a typical pound cake contains per 100 gram cake, about 24 gram fat, of which about 8 gram saturated fat (http://www.caloriechecker.nl, 2008). A reduction in intake of saturated fatty acids is therefore also desired.
One solution to this problem is to remove (part of) the fat in the recipe. However, in case part of the fat is removed from the recipe the batter becomes less viscous and in some cases less stable. The baked cake has less volume, a more dense structure and the mouthfeel is much drier and crumbly. When replaced with moisture a sticky, “not done” texture is obtained
It is an object of the present invention to improve desired cake properties such as e.g. texture and mouthfeel in regular cakes. It is another object of the present invention to enable reduction of the amount of fat in cake recipes, whilst at least maintaining desired cake properties, such as textural properties and mouthfeel.
The action of starch and derivatives as a fat replacer is well known. For instance in U.S. Pat. No. 4,510,166 the fat mimetic properties of alpha amylase degraded starches are described. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,711,986 fat replacement is achieved employing debranched starches. In patent WO 2008071744 fat replacement in dairy using amylomaltase treated starch is described. However, fat replacement using starch derivatives is by no means straight forward and easy. Functionality requirements on fat and hence the fat replacers differ significantly from food item to food item. The replacement of fat in that given item is often unpredictable and a matter of trial and error (see for instance: “Fat Substitute Update,” Food Technology March, 1990, pp 92-97).